Thief 4 using Unreal 3, is open-world and includes multiplayer?

17 Jan 2012 by Paul Younger

There are some people out there who are desperate for the release of Thief 4... our own Peter Parrish is one of those people. Seriously, just mentioning Winona Ryder results in him breaking out in lack-of-Thief-4-sweats.
Y'know, because Ms. Ryder was caught 'thief-ing' stuff...
Well, we've still no official word on a release date or any of the substantial game mechanics, but a few CVs on social-networking site LinkedIn may hold a few nuggets of info as to what we can expect.
A number of the CVs in question confirm that the game is being built on the Unreal 3 engine. Of course, almost everything built with Unreal tech looks bloody marvellous, so no complaints there.
'Networking' and 'Online Tools' are also mentioned, suggesting some form of online functionality or even full-on multiplayer. The game's developers, Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex: Human Revolution), are hardly experts in this area so the positive aspects of such a thing are less easy to assertain.
It's entirely possible that 'online tools' could simply mean PSN/Steam/Xbox Live achievements and/or leaderboards.
Finally, the wording of the game's design and location descriptions could be interpreted to read that Thief 4 will be open-world. "The game's hub", "shops, escape gates, public zones", "The City", "memorable scripted sequences with altered controls" and "extreme situations" are all mentioned.
Anytime you mentioned "hub" you instantly think of an open-world situation. However, given that this is pure speculation, I'll not put my neck out too far by attempting to pull out too much info without proper confirmation.

There are some people out there who are desperate for the release of Thief 4… our own Peter Parrish is one of those people. Seriously, just mentioning Winona Ryder results in him breaking out in lack-of-Thief-4-sweats.
Y’know, because Ms. Ryder was caught ‘thief-ing’ stuff…
Well, we’ve still no official word on a release date or any of the substantial game mechanics, but a few CVs on social-networking site LinkedIn may hold a few nuggets of info as to what we can expect.
A number of the CVs in question confirm that the game is being built on the Unreal 3 engine. Of course, almost everything built with Unreal tech looks bloody marvellous, so no complaints there.
‘Networking’ and ‘Online Tools’ are also mentioned, suggesting some form of online functionality or even full-on multiplayer. The game’s developers, Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex: Human Revolution), are hardly experts in this area so the positive aspects of such a thing are less easy to assertain.
It’s entirely possible that ‘online tools’ could simply mean PSN/Steam/Xbox Live achievements and/or leaderboards.
Finally, the wording of the game’s design and location descriptions could be interpreted to read that Thief 4 will be open-world. “The game’s hub”, “shops, escape gates, public zones”, “The City”, “memorable scripted sequences with altered controls” and “extreme situations” are all mentioned.
Anytime you mentioned “hub” you instantly think of an open-world situation. However, given that this is pure speculation, I’ll not put my neck out too far by attempting to pull out too much info without proper confirmation.

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